As we all know, the PC market is hungover from the euphoria of the last two years. While many expect a return to a normal pace in 2023, the laptop market seems to be struggling a lot more. This is the consequence of a crazy overstocking of goods in the last weeks of 2021 and the beginning of 2022. With inflation and uncertainty, consumption has fallen sharply and notebook production is down significantly. Among the largest Asian manufacturers, caution is the order of the day. For Quanta, Compal, Wistron and Inventec, shipments in the fourth quarter were down sharply. Current market conditions provide low visibility according to several sources.
Compal’s revenue in October was 94.847 billion yuan, a monthly decline of 9.29% and a yearly decline of 18.82%. 2.9 million notebook PCs were shipped, a monthly decline of 200,000 units. Within the company, management has made it clear that, based on current visibility, shipments are expected to decline further in the fourth quarter compared to the previous quarter. The same is true for most of the major Asian manufacturers, although the magnitude of the impact varies. Wistron’s October revenue, for example, was 78.600 billion yuan, a monthly decline of 15.97 percent. But the company is only taking a 2.04 percent annual decline.
Laptops: watch the business operations
While the reasons are global, all agree that the European market demand has been weaker than expected. For us consumers, given that factory inventory levels are still high, expect the de-stocking process to continue. This means that prices will need to be monitored constantly as promotions and sales operations will increase.
